Musée Claude Monet

View of the back of Claude Monet's house, from the country lane that runs past it; Monet, Alice Hoschedé and the children moved to a rented house in Giverny in 1883, achieving, despite the irregularity of their arrangement, a degree of domestic stability that he had never known before. Giverny was to be his home for the rest of his life; he was able to purchase the house in 1890. At Giverny, during the 1890s, Monet began to develop a large flower-garden in front of his house; in 1893 he acquired another parcel of land, just across the road and single-track railway that fronted the property, which included a small pond and a stream. He built an arched bridge, based on Japanese designs, across one end of the pond and received permission to control the flow of water entering from the stream, thus creating a receptive environment for the introduction of exotic species of waterlily. He enlarged the pond in 1901 and 1910. The house and water gardens became his dominant subjects for the rest of his life; they were designed mainly to fulfill his dream that painting out of doors should be equivalent to working in a studio. He set up easels around the pond to enable him to work from different vantage-points and devoted himself to a continuous series of waterlily paintings from the late 1890s to 1910. Here the changeable, fragile natural environment of Giverny, created and nurtured by Monet over a period of almost 50 years, is given its synoptic form in paint. The Musée Claude Monet, his house and gardens at Giverny, was refurbished and opened to the public in 1981. Source: Grove Art Online; http://www.oxfordartonline.com/ (accessed 7/16/2008